From the author of

From the author of

With the recent release of Windows XP Professional and Home editions,
Microsoft has finally begun to consolidate its Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows
2000, and Windows NT codebases into a single operating system going forward.
This convergence of business and consumer operating systems will not be
complete, however, until Windows .NET Server (formerly known as Windows 2002
Server, Windows XP Server, and Whistler) ships in mid-2002.

Although Windows .NET Server is currently in the beta cycle, it is clearly
evident that there will be plenty of new features for IT folks to chew on. In
addition to the inherited changes from the Professional and Home editions that
are user-orientedsuch as Internet Explorer 6.0's new UI, Uninstall,
Dynamic Update, System Restore, and Windows Media Player 8the server
edition includes a bevy of administrative and development features. These
features include Internet Information Services 6.0, Cross Forest
Trust/Authentication/Authorization, Software Restriction Policies, new Command
Line tools, and SharePoint.

In this article, however, I want to limit the discussion to six new features
of Component Services that developers who develop distributed applications will
want to consider when designing applications for use on Windows .NET Server.

#1 Running Applications as Windows NT Services

This enhancement to the Activation tab of the application property dialog (shown
in Figure 1) allows
a server application (one that runs in its own server process) to be configured
as a Windows NT Service. By setting the Authentication level in the Security
tab to at least Packet authentication level, you can check the Run Application
As NT Service check box on the Activation tab. You can then click the Setup
New Service button, which invokes a dialog box allowing you to change the name
of the service (which defaults to the name of the application), the startup
mode, the account under which the service runs, and mark any dependencies that
the service will have. Once configured, you can change these options in the
Services snap-in as you can with any service. As you might expect, if you deselect
the check box in Component Services, the service will be cleaned up.

Figure 1 This
dialog box shows how an application can be configured to run as an NT service.

The advantage of configuring an application as a service is that if the
startup mode is set to Automatic, the component's DLL will be loaded
immediately upon startup of the server rather than on first activation, as was
previously the case. This ensures that the application is immediately
responsive, a particularly important concept when the application resides on a
clustered server. In addition, applications configured as services can be run
under the Local System Account rather than a specific account, as is normally
the case with server applications.